18th.  Up by break of day, and walked down to the old Swan, where I find little Michell building, his booth being taken down, and a foundation laid for a new house, so that that street is like to be a very fine place.  I drank, but did not see Betty, and so to Charing Cross stairs, and thence walked to Sir W. Coventry’s,

     [Sir William Coventry’s love of money is said by Sir John Denham to
     have influenced him in promoting naval officers, who paid him for
     their commissions.

               “Then Painter! draw cerulian Coventry
               Keeper, or rather Chancellor o’ th’ sea
               And more exactly to express his hue,
               Use nothing but ultra-mariuish blue. 
               To pay his fees, the silver trumpet spends,
               And boatswain’s whistle for his place depends. 
               Pilots in vain repeat their compass o’er,
               Until of him they learn that one point more
               The constant magnet to the pole doth hold,
               Steel to the magnet, Coventry to gold. 
               Muscovy sells us pitch, and hemp, and tar;
               Iron and copper, Sweden; Munster, war;
               Ashley, prize; Warwick, custom;
               Cart’ret, pay;
               But Coventry doth sell the fleet away.”—­B.]

and talked with him, who tells me how he hath been persecuted, and how he is yet well come off in the business of the dividing of the fleete, and the sending of the letter.  He expects next to be troubled about the business of bad officers in the fleete, wherein he will bid them name whom they call bad, and he will justify himself, having never disposed of any but by the Admiral’s liking.  And he is able to give an account of all them, how they come recommended, and more will be found to have been placed by the Prince and Duke of Albemarle than by the Duke of York during the war, and as no bad instance of the badness of officers he and I did look over the list of commanders, and found that we could presently recollect thirty-seven commanders that have been killed in actuall service this war.  He tells me that Sir Fr. Hollis is the main man that hath persecuted him hitherto, in the business of dividing the fleete, saying vainly that the want of that letter to the Prince hath given him that, that he shall remember it by to his grave, meaning the loss of his arme; when, God knows! he is as idle and insignificant a fellow as ever come into the fleete.  He tells me that in discourse on Saturday he did repeat Sir Rob.  Howard’s words about rowling out of counsellors, that for his part he neither cared who they rowled in, nor who they rowled out, by which the word is become a word of use in the House, the rowling out of officers.  I will remember what, in mirth, he said to me this morning, when upon this discourse he said, if ever there was another Dutch war, they should not find a Secretary; “Nor,”